Speaker 0 | 00:09.762
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, we have officially the third Phil that’s ever been on the podcast. That’s not including myself. So we have Phil Pokary. I did that right, I’m assuming. No. Okay, on the show. And so first of all, welcome. And officially the third Phil in IT that has been on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds.
Speaker 1 | 00:37.539
Very nice. Thank you.
Speaker 0 | 00:39.139
Yeah. So third must mean something. We’re going to find out right now. Why don’t we just start with, before we get into this really cool thing that you do called logistics, and of course logistics is a big deal right now. I’m assuming that you’ve experienced a teeny bit of growth maybe. during the last two years? Is that a safe assumption or been busy?
Speaker 1 | 01:05.891
I would say we do more transportation than logistics. I mean, each of our sites, we have a warehouse up. But yeah, we’ve definitely seen some growth. And even during the pandemic, while it was full-blown, and they- Everybody was kind of thinking everything was just going to kind of crash or slow down, but it actually did pretty well because of how hot transportation was. Transportation was exempt. So as long as we were able to keep drivers, which that’s always an issue, we’ve been pretty good in that aspect. But yeah, trucks kept running and kept moving.
Speaker 0 | 01:49.137
Do you have your CDL?
Speaker 1 | 01:51.678
I actually do have my CDL.
Speaker 0 | 01:53.639
That’s pretty cool.
Speaker 1 | 01:55.036
So,
Speaker 0 | 01:56.277
so there’s,
Speaker 1 | 01:57.458
these are, we can get into that a little later, but yeah, I do have it.
Speaker 0 | 02:01.941
These are all,
Speaker 1 | 02:02.462
I still have my, um, um, I still have my insurance card as well. So if, if they need me to go, you know, run a load somewhere, I can do it.
Speaker 0 | 02:12.110
That’s pretty sweet. Yeah. Well, I, one of the themes that comes up on the show a lot is how do you know you’re in the right place? How do you know you’re working at the right company? while being in IT? How do you, A, find the right company to work at while being in IT? So you’re probably going to have to say yes when I ask you this question, but are you in the right company? Are you happy to be where you are?
Speaker 1 | 02:39.713
Yeah. I mean, yes, I am happy to be where I am. And in this aspect, I didn’t find them. They actually found me. So it’s kind of weird the way everything kind of works out. But, yeah, I’m happy to be where I’m at.
Speaker 0 | 02:57.261
It just seems to all fit well. I mean, you had your CDL. You’re working at a logistics slash transportation company. So that obviously matches up. How did you get into IT? There must be a story there. What was your first computer? Yeah, how did that happen?
Speaker 1 | 03:14.488
Well, put it this way. My father was, I got in because it was a family business. My father’s always had his own business. on and off. But he started with COBOL programming. That was a little bit before my time. But the earliest that I can remember in IT would be going to his office. Lived in South Florida. He had an office. I don’t know if you remember, key punch cards.
Speaker 0 | 03:46.473
We talk about it.
Speaker 1 | 03:47.713
Running. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 03:49.254
We certainly talk about running paper through machines with holes in it. And if you don’t have all the cards stacked up correctly, then you’ve really screwed up something. And then we laugh about how people complain about the internet being slow now or a program running slow. Or it took me five minutes to test this piece of software or something like that.
Speaker 1 | 04:12.864
It’s so different. I mean, it’s all the same, but it was so different back then. And, you know, he had… the IBM machines and he had a whole office full of back then they were known as key punch girls and they were just hammering stuff out so I remember I’d go there, he’d put me on a machine I didn’t really do nothing but create a whole bunch of cards but he’d stack them up, they’d run through see where the issues were so that’s the chauvinism of key punch girls back in 19… I was in the 70s.
Speaker 0 | 04:53.353
70s. 90. You know what I mean? That’s amazing that it wasn’t that long ago. Does it ever scare you how much? We don’t really realize what has happened over the last 10 years. Let’s see, it’s 2022, so 2012, even maybe 20 years. If you think about how much has happened in just 20 years, it’s quite, how has that affected the human psyche? I don’t know. There’s got to be some psychologist or, I don’t know,
Speaker 1 | 05:22.411
existentialist philosopher. It’s just different. I mean, you know, kind of growing up, I kind of grew up with computers. I always felt very comfortable. that never really scared me or anything but um i always wanted to get into more of the the technical side i was i never really had any kind of interest in coding and you know any kind of classes i took it kind of just didn’t just didn’t work for me you know it wasn’t easy but the infrastructure side it just was fun very easy yeah but in terms of changing i remember in Once they cracked the IBM, they reverse engineered, they started coming out with all the compatibles. I mean, from the XT, 286, 386, 46, and Pentiums, it was nonstop at that point. It was just like, at what point does everything become stable? And it just keeps growing.
Speaker 0 | 06:23.476
It was fun.
Speaker 1 | 06:24.176
It is amazing.
Speaker 0 | 06:24.956
I have a lot of fond memories. It’s not as exciting now. There’s no, like you said. Pentium chip came out. That was exciting. There was a CD-ROM and then there was I can write to my CD-ROM. That was a big deal. That was exciting and fun. When they come out with the iPhone 13 now, it’s just not that exciting. Maybe the iPhone was exciting.
Speaker 1 | 06:50.607
You’re waiting for what’s next, right? Because we all had our pagers, then we had cell phones. We were able to text on our cell phones. But the iPhone was completely different. So it’s like, what’s that next thing that’s going to come out?
Speaker 0 | 07:09.215
I’m thinking Elon Musk is going to come up with mental telepathy or something.
Speaker 1 | 07:13.537
Well, he is working on that chip, right? That neuron chip?
Speaker 0 | 07:16.478
Yeah, there’s got to be some sort of, you know, I can communicate without a phone, maybe. Yeah. I liked the BlackBerry. That was fun. Bez.
Speaker 1 | 07:27.363
the bez server did you ever have to manage the bez server no the server yes i never had a blackberry though never wanted a blackberry i was uh lucky enough not to have that the uh how so there
Speaker 0 | 07:43.890
is something to be said about the difference between software engineers and infrastructure guys i find infrastructure guys to be happier that’s just a blatant Utter, blatant, how do we say, stereotype. I am pigeonholing and stereotyping people. But I find the data center guys to be very, very happy. And the infrastructure guys seem to be high energy guys. Maybe that’s because they’re not stuck in a room, a dark room coding all day. That’s, again, a stereotype. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 08:15.029
that could be. I don’t know. I’ve been around IT a long time. I’ve seen a lot of… A lot of angry infrastructure guys as well.
Speaker 0 | 08:27.050
Okay, so let’s bang that one out. What makes IT guys angry?
Speaker 1 | 08:32.073
End users.
Speaker 0 | 08:34.435
I have to put, I’m supposed to have a new, people have been criticizing my show a little bit. So they feel, you know, you got to add in a new, you have to add in a new section. And there’s some up for, there’s some things up for vote here. So I think that one is nice. What makes… IT guys angry end users. Okay, give me something.
Speaker 1 | 08:54.889
That is a good one.
Speaker 0 | 08:55.409
What was the most angriest time you can remember being made angry by an end user?
Speaker 1 | 09:03.935
Well, I typically, I’ve kind of got beyond that. I mean, once I got into management a long time ago, I kind of outgrew it. I had some really great mentors along the way and kind of take a different approach. But I mean… There’s just, just in support and infrastructure, it could be anything, you know, somebody’s mail not coming through and it’s in their junk mailbox. You know, it’s just, it just can kind of, kind of be anything.
Speaker 0 | 09:36.520
Impatience. So we could label impatient, impatient end users, unruly, unruly, impatient end users.
Speaker 1 | 09:44.446
But a lot of it is, you know, what my philosophy is. And kind of what I do with my teams is, for me, it’s all about communication, right? Communication is half the battle to support. As long as… People know you’re working on their problem and you’re there and you, you know, express some empathy.
Speaker 0 | 10:10.406
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 10:10.786
It goes a long way. Yes. That buys you time, that buys you, you know, the ability to kind of look deeper. And then at the same time, you’re getting them on your side where you end up having a much more positive outcome.
Speaker 0 | 10:24.932
And that goes without saying in the vendor world as well, where lots of mediocrity exists. If we could just communicate. For example, your internet circuit is being delayed because we do not have the right-of-way through the city, town, construction, permit, whatever yet. But we’re going to get it supposedly on Tuesday. That would be nice to know that my internet circuit is actually going to get installed at some point. that we’re doing a site survey and that has come back as this. So we need to trench from here to here. Communication, just one example from a vendor. And I only pick on ISPs because their ISPs are known for mediocrity. I agree with that one. People have heard me coin this term 1-800-GO-POUND-SAND a lot. So just call 1-800-GO-POUND-SAND and you’ll get your answer. You’ve mentioned mentor. And what’s interesting, when I talk with a lot of IT professionals, IT directors, CTOs, CIOs, many of them don’t have mentors or did not have mentors. I don’t know if that’s because they were nerds growing up and they were their own mentors and kind of figured everything out on their own. But you said you’ve had some great mentors. Were they technology mentors or were they more business leadership mentors?
Speaker 1 | 12:02.432
I would say more on the business side.
Speaker 0 | 12:07.857
And why? Why were they a great mentor? What was the big aha moment for you? Or what question did they ask you? What did they do? Kind of a Phoenix Project. Have you read the Phoenix Project or listened to it?
Speaker 1 | 12:19.726
No, I have not.
Speaker 0 | 12:20.607
You should. Audio. There’s like this, you know, like a crone thing, like figure or in the book, you know, that like Asti’s like. you know, kind of whatever, you know, guided questions, you know, and the IT guy’s like, I don’t get it. And he walks away. If you don’t get it, then you’re not ready. You know, something like that, you know? So what was, um, why was this mentor? So give me an example.
Speaker 1 | 12:45.680
Okay. So when I first started in management, I was, you know, I was a kind of a systems engineer and I wanted to kind of move kind of beyond that. Uh, so for different reasons, I thought that was like my only way up. Um, so one of the sales people we had for the company, he’d literally come on site every, you know, every week we’d have a conversation. He was, you know, he worked for our company and he, you know, he, you know, I helped him because I was increasing the sales and everything, but he helped me in, you know, how to kind of put forward new ideas, how really to communicate. more with kind of the senior management at the companies that I was on site for, you know.
Speaker 0 | 13:35.760
This may be one of the biggest turning points in the history of the show. And two fills at the same time. Because quite often sales and IT don’t mix. Usually the sales guy is like, my computer’s broken, replace it. And really what he got frustrated and threw it out the window. That wasn’t me back in the day, by the way. And I was like, I need a new laptop right away. Who is IT anyways? So I want to dig in a little bit on that relationship. He was showing up every day and you were helping him sell what?
Speaker 1 | 14:11.195
Every week. He would come by every week.
Speaker 0 | 14:12.816
And what were you helping him sell? This is another example of where IT is not a cost center. So another huge theme of the show. IT is a call center. It’s a line item on the budget. You know, you guys are expendable. You guys don’t make money for the company. That’s not true.
Speaker 1 | 14:28.405
Right. So I worked for a company. We were, one time they were called bars. It was, you know, like managed services. So I ran a group of- At one time,
Speaker 0 | 14:39.188
like they’re not alive anymore. Yeah. Go ahead. Yes.
Speaker 1 | 14:43.690
Yeah. But I ran a group of engineers on site. We handled all the desktop server and all that stuff. So we kind of got there. There was a change of management. They wanted to kind of go through our contract again. We ended up winning again. And then we started kind of doing our work there. But a lot of what I saw us doing was… things that we should be able to change to automate or become more efficient. So, you know, I started to put different things in place and I had one of my guys actually was very good with coding. So we started creating some of our own tools to use. We were able to get things done a lot quicker. So the view of our group within this other company kind of became like a really bright spot for them as well as for me, because as we were bringing more things in, um, they would be, because we had become so efficient, they would start to come to me and we’d get other projects.
Speaker 0 | 15:54.045
So the four customers like that they were selling to like, yeah,
Speaker 1 | 15:58.326
I mean, it got to be so good and we became so profitable. You know, we had like the CEO of our company came in for a meeting or the whole, you know, I ended up winning an award, a service award, because I’m in charge of service, at the sales conference, which had never happened before. So I was more than happy to go out to Palm Springs to get that. That was something nice. But it was because of this sales guy that we would talk about different things. He would say, tell me, how do you think you’re going to present this? Or what do you think? you’re going to do. And we’d go through that. You know, when we would do quarterly business reviews, that became my responsibility. So, you know, getting me prepared was usually like a one or two day where I’d go down to a company headquarters. You know, I’d kind of lay everything out. We’d go through it, but it wasn’t geared to be all technical. It was more, how can we help the business? What are the goals? that the company wants to achieve? And then how can we, you know, kind of align the services that we were providing to support those goals? So that really changed me a lot.
Speaker 0 | 17:21.520
Yeah, that’s where I think a lot. And this is like, if we could highlight anything on the show, this is where we bridge the gap between the, I mean, the typical everyday IT nerd speak that. you might have with your general team to translation into how are we driving the mission, vision, purpose of the business and helping them make money. So how is IT? So tell me when you go to present and this, a sales guy helped you translate this stuff, i.e. sell to executive management, sell to the executive round table, get you a seat at the executive round table, get you an award at the. at the sales conference, which is amazing. What were the points? What, how do you, is there like a top five or a top three? Like, well, first of all, we break it down into easy bite-sized numbers for the CFO. Number two, we, we do a return on investment. Number three, we show how we’ve become more efficient and cut back on labor and, and produce more widgets or blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. Is there like a, is there like a formula or a special recipe that’s pretty easy for you? Like I bang it out in five. five PowerPoint slides and this is what we do.
Speaker 1 | 18:35.823
No, it really isn’t. It was kind of all geared towards whatever customer I’m working for and really what they’re looking for. I mean, I’ve worked at some places and with the job that I went to, you know, after that one, I was supporting a number of clients and they were all community-sized banks. So there it became very different. So I didn’t have anything set. I mean, you know, there’d always be a little bit of kind of what we did, you know, how we supported them. But I spent a lot of time on, okay, this is not so much what we did as what we’re going to do and what they need us to do. So you always have to cover kind of what you did. But I didn’t want to always make it. I didn’t want to get so granular on that because it’s kind of. It’s like engineering.
Speaker 0 | 19:33.507
It’s like where we can get lost in the engineering mindset, tunnel vision.
Speaker 1 | 19:37.510
And in a lot of these meetings, there’s, I mean, there’s such little tolerance for that. Yeah. You know, you might have one or two people that are interested in that.
Speaker 0 | 19:47.478
Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is? Because they expect you to do your job and they just show me the money?
Speaker 1 | 19:53.643
Yeah, it’s what we do.
Speaker 0 | 19:56.441
You know what I mean? You better keep the lights on. Yeah. My email better work. Yeah. I expect you to have a, whatever, what CSAT score of this and that. That’s all. Yeah. Good. So what are the numbers? Just give them to me. Okay. Now what are you going to do for us and how are we going to grow the business?
Speaker 1 | 20:11.214
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 20:12.514
Yeah. Keep it simple, stupid with the goal of the business in mind, which is the goal of every business is to make money.
Speaker 1 | 20:21.156
Just know your audience. That’s a big thing. Know who your audience is. Know what they’re looking for. And after one meeting with them, you know that right away. So, you know, just based on the questions they’re asking you.
Speaker 0 | 20:37.501
We’re going to take a break here. We’re going to try this next portion. over the show because I’ve been told to break up the show and we need to do a special moment in the show called, and I’ve just thought this one up the other day, which is things we did prior to the internet. So as a child, because you’ve been around long enough and I’m assuming based on, did you use punch cards yourself? I’m guessing you’re maybe a few years older than me, but did you ever have to use punch cards?
Speaker 1 | 21:09.546
No, I did not.
Speaker 0 | 21:10.566
Okay, good. Neither did I.
Speaker 1 | 21:12.587
My first computer was an XT.
Speaker 0 | 21:17.689
Oh, so you’re late.
Speaker 1 | 21:18.889
An 8086,
Speaker 0 | 21:20.670
8080. Are you late 30s then? Are you late 30s,
Speaker 1 | 21:23.231
early 40s? Oh, no. I’m just about mid-50s. Okay, okay. I graduated in 1985. That’s when the first IBM PC came out.
Speaker 0 | 21:31.675
Okay, I graduated in 95. So my first computer was Texas Instruments, like cartridge Bill Cosby at Texas Instruments. Okay, so prior to the internet, so this is fun for all the people out there listening that may have always had internet. What did you do as a child prior to the internet to have fun? I rode a bike. I don’t know. We drank out of the hose in the backyard.
Speaker 1 | 21:59.130
Yeah, all the stuff you see on the internet.
Speaker 0 | 22:01.711
Yeah, we blew things up with firecrackers. Let’s see, what else did I do? I don’t know. Shot BB guns. And I’m just trying to think of what else I did as a child prior to the internet. Played sports, put together teams.
Speaker 1 | 22:15.535
Yeah, I mean, that’s really what it was. We were outside doing things. You had friends. We were always playing whatever sports, depending on what the weather was. And, you know, if it snowed, we’d go out, try to earn a few bucks, shoveling dry boys.
Speaker 0 | 22:30.405
Yeah. Ping pong.
Speaker 1 | 22:31.586
Cutting grass in the summer and, you know, just newspaper routes, whatever.
Speaker 0 | 22:36.409
Newspaper routes. right we read the newspaper there was no internet there was no internet it’s shocking to me when i go back and i think about it the first uh video game that i can well first of all i remember pong we had pong yep and then i remember like my brother’s friend they had an atari and when i saw that i was like this is like amazing yeah that was great this was like i just i was so jealous i was like why do my parents not have this um Yeah, you had to put the antenna up on the TV and stuff. If cable was in your town, that was a rarity. We never had cable until that was even like a decade ago. I don’t think we even had cable. It was always dish or something, but we didn’t have that. Remember those people had those huge satellite dishes that were like, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1 | 23:21.649
the big giant ones.
Speaker 0 | 23:22.429
I don’t know, six foot parabolic dish in your backyard that was like just a monstrosity. People had that. I still wonder how they made that work or what you paid for that thing. So we rode bikes. That wasn’t as exciting maybe as I thought it was. Maybe it was the rope swings. I took my kids by the rope swing that was off this old railroad bridge hidden in the woods. We came out with a bunch of ticks on ourselves. But this rope swing went off an old railroad bridge into a water with snapping tunnels. And there was always old stories of like so-and-so got the end of his work. bit off by a snapping turtle and someone hit an invisible stick underground but you know that was that was what we did prior to the internet so that finishes I did go white water rafting a couple times that was pretty cool yeah we can still do that it’s amazing when yeah if you just get outside I wonder how that so again that was it’s a different place now and it all happened so fast it did my kids grow up and they kind of just you
Speaker 1 | 24:31.118
It is what it is. It’s just normal to them. But we tried to keep them as much as possible involved in things outside, kind of outside the house, whether it’s my daughters with Dan, my sons and daughters with karate and baseball, softball, whatever. Nice. They were always involved outside the house. I just started at JGTV. And they got all the devices and stuff.
Speaker 0 | 24:59.502
I just started a Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio in my barn out back. So we’ve got my sons involved in that, so that’s cool. Extremest thing I ever did Was take the TV out of the house But now I realize It really didn’t make much of a difference At all because they still have laptops And phones so it’s like To them they don’t even care about the TV anyway So like who watches cable So it was like back in the day It was like just preventing them from watching DVD What it was was like don’t just turn the TV On to like quiet the kids down Like you know spend time with your kids Like educate them don’t just like you know Throw them in front of a glass window.
Speaker 1 | 25:41.267
Oh, no, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that was one thing me and my wife, we did a lot. We didn’t just put the TV on to keep everyone quiet.
Speaker 0 | 25:50.174
So we’ve been without a TV for like 10 years now. And now it’s just normal. So I just go, it’s an excuse to go over to my father’s house to watch like, you know, like the fighter basketball game or something like that. So, okay, that concludes what we did prior to the internet. I do want to talk a little bit about what you guys do as a transportation company that’s really, really cool. Because when I was on your website, I saw that you guys move. You have like a whole IT portion of your company, but your company is a trucking company. So I’m assuming, do you guys do the typical trucking stuff? Like do you have a bid board? Like truckers call in and they bid on like loads and stuff like that. And then like when loads and you have like maybe like a… Yeah. like a dispatch section that just, do you guys do that?
Speaker 1 | 26:42.260
Yeah, we have a dispatch, but we’re not really, we don’t really big jobs out. Okay. So we have, I’m not sure exactly, I think six or seven divisions within transportation. And each one of them is run pretty much as their own business because they are different. We, you know, we like, we have one. and we actually have two auto divisions. So did you ever see the Mecham car auctions on TV? Yeah. Yeah, well, we do a lot of the transportation. You know, when cars are bought and sold, we have special car carriers. So not, you know, driving down the road, you see nine cars on the back of a car carrier or nine vehicles, whatever. It’s not those.
Speaker 0 | 27:30.927
Yours is like the Rolls Royce. Yours is like I’m delivering a Corniche convertible somewhere and it’s in a like. vacuum sealed truck with padding around it or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 27:41.512
exactly. At any particular time, I can walk into the warehouse that’s attached to our main office and walk out there. There’s two old Rolls Royces. There’s definitely a lot of cars just sitting there.
Speaker 0 | 27:57.321
See,
Speaker 1 | 27:57.481
you have a cool job.
Speaker 0 | 27:59.282
Yeah, this is a cool job.
Speaker 1 | 28:03.144
We do that. We do a lot of the high-end car companies we deliver for those uh a lot of private autos we do those um you know then you have the whole snowbirds right they’re they’re you know when they fly down they want their car um so kind of handle that i feel like we but we do is something as traditional as household moving that’s a big part of our business so we’re an agent for um united you’ll see united going down yep um but we do a lot of business. And with some of that, you know, part of it’s through the government. You know, we work with different moving parts. Yeah. So, you know, we’re, we’re moving families around and, you know, this is a, for, you know, this time of the year that, that business is really busy.
Speaker 0 | 28:57.820
Well, COVID must’ve been crazy with that. Now we, we do cater to it directors. from mid-market to enterprise level, believe it or not, on the show. And many of them have probably contemplated or do contemplate or are in the midst of or do migrate data centers.
Speaker 1 | 29:17.383
Right.
Speaker 0 | 29:19.204
Why? And I would think once someone’s in a data center, a lot of these data center providers think, like, we got them. Like, they’re not moving because why would you move? And it’s just, you know, you got to move all these racks and we’ve got, I don’t know. 2,000 RUs or something. Who knows? No one’s going to move that. It’s just like you’re stuck. Why would someone move a data center?
Speaker 1 | 29:41.215
There are some major companies that are moving more than one data center. And they’ll move them out of one facility and they’ll move them to another. I don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 29:50.662
Consolidation? Move seven data centers into two?
Speaker 1 | 29:54.885
It could be cost. It could be locations.
Speaker 0 | 29:58.768
Geo-reducing.
Speaker 1 | 30:00.589
Right. There’s a lot of different reasons, but I mean, we have one business that’s focused entirely on just moving. data centers. So we have specialized employees, we have trucks that are outfitted to be able to move equipment like that. Team of people goes on site if you need everything, they can kind of deconstruct it all and put it back together where every single wire needs to go. you know, every single day.
Speaker 0 | 30:37.266
You guys take them from step eight from like, Hey, we’re thinking of moving our data center. Can you guys, no problem. We’ll bring in the network engineers. We’ll help you map it out. We’ll do an initial needs assessment. We’ll talk about unplugging everything, how you move. Will you take it full soup to nuts cradle to the grave as they say?
Speaker 1 | 30:54.736
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 30:55.916
That’s really cool. So for everyone out there listening, I’m giving your company a free plug. However we want to, and maybe we can get you another sales award. Everyone contact Phil. It doesn’t matter which Phil If you contact me or you contact the other Phil Any Phil that you talk to on this show Will get you to the right Phil That’s true So have you been involved In any of those moves Technically No
Speaker 1 | 31:25.530
For me I handle The kind of company Day to day
Speaker 0 | 31:30.352
How many guys do you have underneath you How big of an IT staff
Speaker 1 | 31:35.718
I have three people. It is the smallest group I’ve ever had in my life. Oh, I mean, the company itself, we’re a company of 400 people. So it’s not, you know, and…
Speaker 0 | 31:46.442
You should get one more.
Speaker 1 | 31:47.302
300 of them are computer users. Okay. So, you know, we have a lot of drivers and stuff like that. So, you know, we’re right size for the company. Cool.
Speaker 0 | 32:00.588
I found that in mid-market IT space, so that would be… 200 employees upwards of, I don’t know, I probably cut off at 5,000 maybe. That the average end user to IT staff ratio is one to a hundred.
Speaker 1 | 32:15.154
That’s about right.
Speaker 0 | 32:17.095
So you’re three to 400. So, you know, we could probably get you an extra guy in there somehow. But still it’s one to 125. That’s pretty much it. And that’s the whole point of the show is that you guys every day, it’s When you really think about it, what the IT guys do every day to keep the company running is quite amazing. That there’s three of you keeping 400 people able to, and the entire company kind of like up on stilts, right?
Speaker 1 | 32:53.377
Right.
Speaker 0 | 32:54.538
Because there’s nothing in the company that gets done better without IT involved. And there’s nothing that can get done if it all shut off and didn’t work. It would be quite a disaster. So part of the mission of this show is to say, hey, maybe we could give IT a little bit, like maybe a couple more points on the budget at the end of the year. Maybe we give them like, you know, I don’t know, 10% versus 3%. And it would make all the difference in the world.
Speaker 1 | 33:21.954
I don’t know. I love the financial aspect of IT. I love it. working with the budget. And that’s something I’m actually just this year, I’ve only been with my current company about a year and a half, but just this year I’m taking over that piece of it. And, you know, it’s, I mean, what people always say is, how can I save my company money? You know, that’s a piece of it.
Speaker 0 | 33:53.571
How can you make the company happen?
Speaker 1 | 33:56.352
Yeah. How can I make, how can I keep the company safe? from, right?
Speaker 0 | 34:00.795
Right.
Speaker 1 | 34:02.135
You know, there’s always ways to save money, but that’s not, saving money is not the focal point of IT. Well,
Speaker 0 | 34:08.979
I think that was the point though. I think that was the point is that even if I saved you 50% of your entire budget, right? Even if you came in and you saved them 50% and you cut the budget in half, it’s not that big of a difference at the end of the day when you think about how much IT affects the bottom line. So… That’s kind of the point is that even if you do save some, okay, good, your job is not to waste money for sure. Good, we’re not wasting money, but it’s really not about saving money. It’s about being more efficient, like you said, safer, able to do more with less, aiding our end users to do their job better, faster, more. You know, if anything, able to do more with less employee headcount in a certain area so we can reinvest that. headcount into making more money and headcount’s a very unhumanistic term. I don’t know why I used that. I think it’s because we should never call our people headcount.
Speaker 1 | 35:05.276
It’s like human capital, right?
Speaker 0 | 35:06.856
Yes, human capital. I can’t say it. Employee number 303. No. End user. End user. Node on the network.
Speaker 1 | 35:20.660
Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 35:21.260
exactly. This node is not functioning properly.
Speaker 1 | 35:24.841
No, I just think it’s I think you can, I think IT. in every place I was at, if you made a good business case for the dollars you need, I’ve always been able to get it. That’s never been a, never been an issue for me. Great. Because if, you know, it’s, you need to put it in terms that whoever is going to be approving that can understand. And, um,
Speaker 0 | 35:52.087
what’s the biggest upgrade you’ve ever had to sell or silo you’ve had to eliminate and, you know, I guess it’s like two different questions. What’s the biggest upgrade you’ve ever had to see?
Speaker 1 | 36:06.328
This was a few years ago. The biggest one we did was we were moving. We had an on-site Avaya phone system. Kind of outgrow it.
Speaker 0 | 36:16.511
Right up in the alley.
Speaker 1 | 36:17.291
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 36:18.951
Was it IP office? Avaya IP office or something like that?
Speaker 1 | 36:23.793
I don’t know. Whatever it was,
Speaker 0 | 36:25.693
it was a PBX. box in the back room. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 36:28.014
yeah. And there was two of them, one in each site. It just was undersized and it was costing a lot. I needed people to take care of it. It was just a nightmare. And, you know, it was just like, really, I got to take care of this.
Speaker 0 | 36:40.503
You had a phone vendor. You had to roll it up. And the paper. Yeah, gotcha. You know,
Speaker 1 | 36:47.689
the company I was with was really big into Gartner.
Speaker 0 | 36:52.632
Ring Central? Where’d you go? Ring Central?
Speaker 1 | 36:55.486
No, I went to, it was a company back then, it was called Thinking Phones. Ah, Fuse. Fuse, they’re Fuse now. Yeah, and at the time we were their biggest customer. But yeah, we had…
Speaker 0 | 37:07.692
I always said phones.
Speaker 1 | 37:08.613
A thousand phones, a hundred locations. Yeah. And we went and we did that. And the company I was with, they were family owned. And I basically told them… They said, why should we do this? I said, well, it’s going to cost you $100,000 because we need new phones. And they said, okay, well, how much is it going to save us? I said, half a million dollars a year in each of your pockets. And there were three brothers. And they said, how soon can you get this done? Don’t you love that? At the same point, I’ll tell you, it was really, really odd. because this was kind of the biggest project that I was pulling from an IT perspective into this company.
Speaker 0 | 38:02.566
How did you save money? How did you save the money? What was the, how do you do that ROI calculation? Because if you went from an Avaya system, you probably had like a handful of PRIs that weren’t costing you that much.
Speaker 1 | 38:14.593
And that’s what it was. I mean, this was, we were all going over our data lines. So all the… connections were going internal over our lines instead of everything was going out i mean we we had just to just to try to understand and dig up every stinking phone line we had in every location yep and you know we had to keep the ones that were you know the burglar alarm fire alarm and those it was it was a it was a giant project but it was um It was also, at that company, I started to become bigger than the CIO. And then the CIO started having issues with me. That he couldn’t pinpoint, tell me exactly why.
Speaker 0 | 39:10.654
You’re making me look bad.
Speaker 1 | 39:13.315
I started, the owners started requesting that I would come to them with these projects. And because I saved them so much money, I moved. I got out of SunGuard and we went to another data center. I saved them, I don’t know, it was about $100,000. They were very big on savings because they had so many locations. Transportation is a tough business when the cost of oil is going up. Back then, they weren’t prepared for it. They didn’t have the automatic surcharges in place. So they had to eat a lot of the cost of fuel. So now it’s a little different. Cost of fuel goes up. That is a problem. But there’s surcharges that are built into all the contracts now to protect against that.
Speaker 0 | 39:59.130
So that was a fun project management thing to upgrade from Fuse. Of course, they gave you their in-house project managers and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 | 40:09.639
Yeah, Fuse was great. I mean, when we met with them, I mean, some of the best negotiation. For me, I enjoy the vendor negotiation piece of it. I really enjoy that part.
Speaker 0 | 40:24.070
Yeah, it’s fun. Awesome. So that was actually a great example. I did not expect you to come up with me being an ex-Telecom guy. Well, still kind of. I mean, I still do a lot of Telecom, but that was kind of where I first got into technology was a Cisco startup where we were selling, you know, SIP trunking and converting it into PRIs. And that was like 20 years ago. So. seen a million of those via ip offices or phone system upgrades mytel shortels um certainly new um few slash thinking phones back then i used to laugh like you don’t want your phones to think stop that you want dumb no i know i don’t want phones thinking the second phones you know that’s why they yeah i don’t know if you want your name so yeah
Speaker 1 | 41:07.906
but they were they were a great company i mean that you know you mentioned about working with vendors um and they were i mean they were like they were like a startup. I mean, it was, you know, we went on site with them a couple of times and it was just a great feeling, you know, everyone was kind of pulling in the same direction and it was, it was nice.
Speaker 0 | 41:30.595
Awesome.
Speaker 1 | 41:30.895
And it, you know, I, I try to, any vendor I work with, I try to keep a good relationship, but there’s, there’s only been a handful that have been really, really, you know, everybody wants to be your partner. And I always say you’re a vendor until you. You kind of earn your way to be a partner, but there’s only been a few that have been real true partners.
Speaker 0 | 41:53.477
That’s just back to the ISPs and back to the mediocrity in the space. And the 80-20 rule, right? 20% out of the 80% are actually above mediocre. And then there’s the 5% at the top that actually, 5 to the 1% at the top that actually do what they say they’re going to do and follow up and communicate well.
Speaker 1 | 42:13.428
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 42:14.188
And first of all… you know, voice and data and is in the top five worst industries, giving them worst customer service across the board. And that was according to Forbes. So, um, ISPs, let’s see what it was. Yeah. ISPs, cable companies and cell phone providers are in like the top three. I think insurance is like fourth or something. Um, have you, so you’re, I guess the final question to benefit the listeners out there, how would you say you get promoted? I just find it interesting because you said, I started gaining the favor of executive management, maybe over the CIO, which actually has become a problem. And I’ve seen that. That’s been a common theme where it’s like some people say, you just got to go around them because sometimes people are there just to block you. And they’ve been a butt in the seat for so long and they’ve been in the same position for 20 years. And they’re just happy showing up to work and punching in and punching out type of thing. So from an IT perspective, for people growing in IT, for the youngsters out there that have had the internet, the benefit of the internet their whole life and not the benefit of playing outside and riding a bike. What is your advice to getting promoted and growing in this space?
Speaker 1 | 43:38.091
Ask. Ask.
Speaker 0 | 43:40.413
Oh, can I get a raise?
Speaker 1 | 43:42.734
can I get a raise? You know, I want the next position project.
Speaker 0 | 43:47.556
Can I take on a project?
Speaker 1 | 43:48.676
No one’s ever come up to me and say, Oh, Philly, you’ve done such a great job. You know, we want to promote you. That’s never happened. That’s a good point. It’s always been me going after what I want, whether it’s money, whether it was a bonus, um, you know, getting some compensation for, you know, the, you know, new business, uh, new position, things like that. That’s a great point. It’s always, I’ve just asked for it.
Speaker 0 | 44:17.332
A lot of times.
Speaker 1 | 44:18.492
They don’t just say yes. I mean, you know, it comes back to kind of business case, you know, it’s.
Speaker 0 | 44:25.295
Back to selling again. That’s back to your sales guy where you can say, I would like to get promoted. I would like to take on the next biggest project. I would like blah, blah, blah, whatever it is you’re asking. And then you say, what do I need to do to get there? And if I do, and then tie them down and then tie them down. And if I do X, Y, and Z, you’re going to give me that promotion.
Speaker 1 | 44:46.827
Right. So perfect example. When I left that one company I was telling you about, I went and I got a job. It was position was called a consulting manager. So small company, a hundred people. Basically I was in the Northeast region. So I was going to work out of the office there. Companies based out of Southern California.
Speaker 0 | 45:06.013
Northeast.
Speaker 1 | 45:06.473
Really, really.
Speaker 0 | 45:07.413
New Jersey or? We’re in Northeast. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 45:09.310
New Jersey. Exactly. Yeah. Kind of the armpit of the country.
Speaker 0 | 45:12.951
Well, I used to, I’m from Worcester, Massachusetts, and I called Worcester the armpit of the Northeast. Okay. So you’re calling New Jersey’s a step up.
Speaker 1 | 45:20.334
Oh, boy. I’ve lived here too many years. Trying to get out. Every time I try to get out,
Speaker 0 | 45:25.736
I get sucked back in.
Speaker 1 | 45:26.536
Yeah. Okay. But, um, so. They did these quarterly meetings in California. So I go out there for the first one and there’s all this conversation going on. And they say, oh, they’re making some changes. They need to talk to me separately on the night that everyone’s supposed to go out. I’m like, oh, wow, this is great. I’ve been here a month and they’re going to be telling me why things change, right? So they told me they’re changing the structure and they were going to move to… putting a director in place at each of the regions. There was four regions. And they said they’d be looking at somebody for my region. Now, the job that they hired me for was a little bit different. It was a little more technical than a director. And I said, listen, I said, well, why don’t you guys hold off on finding someone? I said, because I would love to fit into that role. And they said, oh, we could do that. You know, and then… So they agreed to hold that open to see if I would kind of be able to move into that. So it was much more, I mean, it was handling the entire, they wanted us to run this as a business. So it was more than just meeting with the banks and working through IT issues and all the banks that we supported and all that. It was literally running it. And that’s where my second mentor came in.
Speaker 0 | 46:58.315
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 46:58.716
go ahead please continue uh i’ll name him michael barrack because this guy was how do you spell his last name b-a-r-r-a-c-k okay he’s ceo of a company um not only him the the owner of the company uh younger guy romero bossu was his company it was phenomenal what they did you for me and having me run, it was they taught me, they mentored me, they got me thinking differently and forced me out of my comfort zone. And I just, in less than six months, I was promoted to the director of the Northeast. I won the award. there for my first year there because I increased, I had the top numbers in all four areas for the, you know, the entire company. It was just, it was kind of, I just broke out at that point. Everything was kind of working, but this is where I was dealing, you know, I, I hear you on some of your other podcasts and you talk about, you know, the language of business. Well, they helped me understand the language of business. especially since I was sitting in support meetings with bankers, I had to understand it. And they really brought me through it.
Speaker 0 | 48:29.830
Is this Michael Barrick? Is he the guy that’s at, is it Accume Partners now? Accume. Accume Partners? Yeah. Okay, good. I got him. I found him.
Speaker 1 | 48:40.179
We will follow you. Yeah, I mean, he became a personal friend and he just, he pushed me and we had one-on-one meetings every week. And it got to a point where I just learned so much from him in the position, but also from Romero as being the business owner. Romero treated me like the Northeast was mine. And, you know, whether it was presenting numbers, but I got very comfortable in communicating with all different levels.
Speaker 0 | 49:15.863
I think one of the things. seems to come out of here and I’ve forgotten this before. And it’s a really, really great tip or strategy for growing in your career is there is no rules. You don’t have to follow a resume. You don’t have to go to a recruiter. You don’t have to do, there’s no, there’s no rules necessarily. You can offer yourself up for free and throw yourself out there, which is basically what you did. You said, I’m in this role right now. I’ll do this other role for free for a month. And if I suck at it, you can hire the other guy. And if I’m If I’m really, really good at it, then, you know, yeah, give me the raise and put me in charge. And they’re like, okay, now join this inner circle and we’ll get you out of your comfort zone and we’ll really, really push you. And basically what they’re looking for is that someone is a go-getter. They’re looking for someone that wanted the role because that’s what everyone wants. If you want someone on your team, you want someone that’s proactive, that’s energetic, that’s going to go do something without you having to ask them to do that.
Speaker 1 | 50:13.042
And like I said, if I did not ask. for that, I could have stayed in that position and just continued doing what they hired. I never would have gotten it. I don’t think there would have been a time where they said Oh, you know what, Phil, you’ve been here a while.
Speaker 0 | 50:30.381
Sometimes it just seems simple.
Speaker 1 | 50:31.722
Just ask for it.
Speaker 0 | 50:33.303
It’s simple. Like you don’t know what you don’t know. Okay, fine. But I’m willing to learn and I’m willing to ask and I’m willing to drive and be up in your grill. You know, I had one of my mentors when I quit, I said, you know, what do I, I quit corporate America and I started a consulting business years ago. And I said, hey, what do I need to do? He’s like, you need to do one thing. Don’t worry about your taxes. Don’t worry about this. Don’t worry about that. You just need to sell, sell, sell. I was like, what? He’s like, you need to be up in people’s grill, unforgettable. You are there all the time. He didn’t mean it in a bad way. He meant it in a good way. But when you’re present, and sometimes it’s just about the person that’s there present all the time. pleasantly persistent person that can talk with people and like people. Yeah. Yeah. You’ll be successful. That’s a great story. It’s a great story. We’re going to, we’ll give a shout out to Michael Baric. We’ll, we’ll give him a link on the show. I’ll reach out to him. It has been an absolute pleasure, Phil, having you on the show, officially the third Phil, and you’ve absolutely 100% lived up to the title of third Phil on dissecting popular.
Speaker 1 | 51:52.683
Third Phil.
Speaker 0 | 51:53.652
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 51:54.112
Well, not to, you know, I am also a third Phil.
Speaker 0 | 51:58.135
Are you the third?
Speaker 1 | 51:58.836
My son’s a fourth Phil. I am the third. I am the third also.
Speaker 0 | 52:02.559
I am also Philip Howard the third. And I don’t usually tell people that because there’s like a thing that’s just, I don’t know, something about being a third, I guess. Of course you know. Of course you know because you’re also a third. This is amazing. This is like truly meant to be. Both Phil, both Phil the thirds on the third with the third film. Yeah. Yes. Outstanding. Outstanding. Thank you so much. Been an absolute pleasure. I, and of course all the best in, in the future and future growth. And I look forward to seeing you grow even more.
Speaker 1 | 52:40.166
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
